Selina’s Music Corner.

Going Dotty!
With the help of Collected Works for Solo Guitar by Villa Lobos

These thoughts really lead on from last month’s discussion about fingering and represent something else that I feel quite strongly about – as you may have gathered the list is endless!

The use of dots along the side of the guitar neck for guidance is one of those contentious subjects in the guitar world, along the lines of rest stoke and free stroke, that really do get in the way of us just concentrating on getting the best from the music!

For me it is quite simple.
Of course it is OK to refer to dots to help to guide you around the guitar. In fact many of us cannot get away from them since they are built into the instrument when it is made.

The dots are helpful and give you guidance as well as a sense of security.

But do we really need them?

They act as a safety blanket but do they change the way that we get around and become the only means of getting to a position.

When I was teaching at the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama I had a valuable experience. During a lesson I was chatting to one of the students about guitars and he asked if he could try my guitar. He started to play and seemed to be having some difficulty in getting around. He handed the guitar back to me saying that the problem was the lack of dots.
The worrying thing is that the dots being there seemed to have stopped him learning the physical movements required to move around the guitar.
Think about it; our every day movements and actions are memorized so that we don’t have to think about how to brush our teeth for example. Sports men and women use more complex memorized actions with no opportunity for ‘external’ reference points.

We use very complex movements but we can memorize the movements required so that we do not need reference points – we can choose to have them for an extra level of security. Of course having more than one can cause more trouble than they are worth, introducing choice, which gets in the way when stressed!

We can become more confident in our movements around the fingerboard through properly learning where the notes are (using names); using our eyes to build up a visual memory which is very important and then practising without looking; using repetition and linking the printed note to the sound and its place on the guitar.

This is something that I was forced to do since I lost all confidence in my ability to memorize pieces when I was about 20! I can move freely around the fingerboard without looking and now that I have made progress in improving my memory I am even better off.

There is a lot of music out there that can help us to develop a better sense of movement around the guitar and also develop our fingering skills as well as being great to play.

This month I would like to focus on Villa Lobos using the Collected Works for Solo Guitar.

There is so much movement in his pieces with lots of sliding shapes, sequences and big interval jumps, with musical shape and direction that requires great freedom, relaxed agility and flowing technique.
The music is advanced, grade 6 upwards and I think that it is invaluable for technical and musical development – as well as making you think about fingering and teaching you how to get about!

The short introduction by Frederick Noad provides an excellent summary of Villa Lobos’ history with the guitar, his innovative style and his meeting and subsequent association with Segovia to whom he dedicated his 12 Etudes.
The introduction also explains his notation of harmonics and the associated problems. In fact there is a section at the end of the book that concentrates on specific problems which is very helpful for players looking at this music for the first time.

Much of this music is very well known to guitarists of all standards, and as Noad says it “has probably been more studied, performed and recorded than any other guitar compositions of the twentieth century.”
This is reason enough I think for it to be an essential part of a guitarists library.

The book starts with Choros no.1, the first of a set of pieces of the same name written for various combinations of instruments.
The word choro is Portuguese for weeping, tears and became the name used for music played by an ensemble of Brazilian street musicians using both African and European instruments who improvise in a free and often dissonant kind of counterpoint.
This piece has great pulse and rhythm as well as a sense of freedom that makes it very evocative. It is technically difficult for the left hand requiring lots of quick movement between big chord shapes and barres while maintaining melodic shape and direction.
As in many of these pieces much of the melody is in chords providing the challenge of thinking horizontally in up to 4 voices rather than in vertical finger shapes.
There is a lot of rubato indicated in the music and this is very important but the music does need the underlying pulse and rhythmical structure in place before you start to pull it around.
Again this is a feature in all of these pieces and is often what spoils my enjoyment of the music – rubato without structure tends to lead music without sense and direction.
Unlike the rest of the pieces in this collection the Choros does have some fingering but it is not overdone. The player does need to have very good technical control and knowledge of the fingerboard to really communicate the spirit of this piece.

The Suite Populaire Bresilienne is made up of five melodic and emotional pieces that use contrasting dance forms combined with Villa Lobos’ choro style. They are Mazurka Choro, Schottish Choro, Valsa Choro, Gavotta Choro and Chorinho. They all have a natural flow and rhythm and are made up of repeating and contrasting sections. There are many unusual and more dissonant sounds combined with easily singing melodies and rich harmony.
I love the delicate opening figure in Schottish and the sweeping melodic line of the Mazurka. There is a constant feel of movement in the music with no compromises made for travel around the fingerboard.
The Valsa highlights control of voicing between parts and within the chordal melody. Similarly the Gavotta requires three distinct parts throughout with constant movement in chords.
The Chorinho is purely from the Brazilian tradition and is more unusual and quirky. It is all about the rhythm and feel for the pulse with lovely, moody, low harmonies and a major section that is simply great fun to play!

The Twelve studies truly represent an important and innovative change in writing for the guitar. They pushed the boundaries of classical guitar technique further than ever before while maintaining musicality as performance pieces, as Segovia points out in his preface to the first edition, which is printed here in full. The first 4 cover basic techniques – right hand arpeggio patterns, left hand arpeggios moving around the fingerboard, slurs and rapid repeated chords. The rest of the pieces cover combinations of techniques and musical ideas such as maintaining voices, melody and accompaniment, multiple slurs, rhythmical challenges and ornaments.

I particularly like the peaceful flow of the ostinato lower voice in no.5, the contrast between tumbling scales and emotional melody with accompaniment in no.7, the beautiful and mournful melody in no.8 and the contrast of drama with the lightness of multiple slurs accompanying a bass melody in no.10 – very tricky!

With all of the studies it is obvious what you are trying to achieve and so satisfying when you start to hear progress. Add to that the fact that they are very suitable for performance repertoire and you are killing two birds with one stone as they say.
This set of pieces really does represent a lifetime’s work for the performer.

The Five Preludes are perhaps some of the most recognizable guitar pieces ever written, not heard so much in performance these days which is a great shame as they are so wonderful for developing a guitarists technical freedom and musical interpretation skills. One of these skills is controlling musical shape and direction through the use of rubato. When you look at the pieces on the page you can see a lot of rhythmical detail and subtlety that is very important but often gets neglected.

Freedom in these pieces is wonderful and necessary but needs to have a structure to build on to have the desired effect.
The melodies are quite romantic, notably in no.1 and no.4 and it is easy to get carried away!
However as soon as you start to recognize the rhythm and pulse the musical shape shines through and creates its own freedom.
The 5 pieces are similar in structure – loosely A B A – and contain many contrasts in dynamics, texture, emotion and musical ebb and flow.
No.1 has a fantastic, long melody line with extended phrases and a great emotional build up. No. 2 has a more graceful and delicate arpeggio based melody with an intense and dramatic contrasting section. The rising lines of no.3 really highlight the sonorities of the guitar and its singing voice, with a second section that is very difficult to pull off and requires lots of musical thought, but the end result is exquisite! I love the stillness and sonorous melody of no.4 with its busy and compelling centre section and no.5 is simply a lovely, sunny melody with lots of voicing needed to bring out the harmonies that move with the melody and, again an intense and melancholy middle section.

It is great to have all of these pieces together, challenging you as a player both technically and musically for as long as you play and making you think about, and work out fingering so giving you a better knowledge of the fingerboard.

Add to this the freedom of movement that you gain being able to move without the reference of the dots, so important for communicating music without it sounding technical, and there you have it – a must for the personal library!

Selina.